One of the issues that keeps popping up in the national media is how badly our school system is, how it is failing, how it doesn’t compete well with those in the rest of the known world. We are told by various pundits that China and India are blowing right past us, that the systems in Japan and Europe put us to shame. I tend to read those stories, as I am a teacher and always curious about what the writer has to say. Nowhere in these writings do I find anyone comparing the actual school systems with what we do in the United States. The most common statement seems to be that we don’t spend enough time in school, and that it isn’t rigorous enough. The age of starting school, the length and composition of the school day and school year, the classroom conditions, and the actual make up of the school systems aren’t addressed. It appears to be easier, and perhaps more saleable, to follow the line that we aren’t doing enough. This is just a quick post, and I will get back to all of that in different post. I will stop with this question: if we are the educational laggards that some make us out to be, how come the United States has more Noble prizes than anyone else on the planet?

I noticed in multiple articles you touch on the comparison between America’s school systems and how the rest of the world educates their little ones. I didn’t know where to comment, so I started at the beginning. I agree with you that our system is “not so bad”. Once concept that seems to get lost in the minutia of test scores and time spent in class is how we educate our children. In addition to teaching the three R’s, America seems to do a pretty good job of teaching kids how to think, explore, question and problem solve. Not all of life’s problems are conquered by wrote memorization of facts and formulas.